torsdag 31. desember 2015

In a previous blogpost I wrote down
some reflections on the structuring of the narrative in stories about
saints. This post was prompted by a reading group I've been arranging
at the Centre for Medieval Literature in Odense where I work, in
which we've read excerpts from Legenda Aurea by
Jacobus de Voragine. The present post follows in the same vein, but
while the previous post considered narrative in stories which were
very brief, I here wish to consider what happens to the narrative
when the story contains a great multitude of characters. The post in
centred on the story of Saint Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins
of Cologne, parts of which legend we translated in the last reading
group session of the semester.

I'm also happy to know that the
reading group inspired my colleague Alaistair Matthews to blog about
his thoughts on the Ursula legend and medieval German literature,
which can be read here.

Ursula shielding the virgins in her cloakAmiens - BM - ms. 0203, f.045, book of hours, use of Rome, 15th centuryCourtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

The Legend of Ursula

The
legend of Ursula has been long in the making, and the story has
received elaborating impulses at various points over a long stretch
of time. The earliest evidence for a veneration of the virgin martyrs
of Cologne is found in an inscription in an old basilica which states
that a certain Clematius built this chapel in honour of the martyred
virgins of the city. The inscription is believed to be from the
fourth, or possibly the fifth, century, and is the foundation for the
rest of the legend, although it provides neither names, dates or
numbers.

The next step in the development of the legend came
in the ninth century, when a sermon was written in
natali sanctarum Coloniensum virginum,
for the birthday of the holy virgins of Cologne. This birthday refers
to the day of their death, considered in the theology of sainthood to
be the heavenly birthday of the saint, the day when the saint
entered, or was reborn in, Heaven. In this sermon we are for the
first time given names and numbers, and it is stated that there were
several thousand virgins, foremost of whom was the virgin Pinnosa.
The high number of virgins is repeated in the martyrology of
Wandalbert of Prüm, c.850, where it is said that there were several
thousand of these virgins. This source might have been the Sermo
in natali,
for the martyrology of Usuard, c.875, only gives the names Martha and
Saula and adds that there were several others, and this suggests that
the high number of the Sermo
had not yet become consensus. However, only a few decades after
Usuard the number is set at eleven thousand and this became consensus
for the centuries to come.

It was during the course of the
tenth century that prose narratives emerged in which the basic story
was established: The daughter of a Christian English king, Ursula, is
asked for her hand in marriage by a pagan prince. Ursula wants to
avoid the marriage, so she asks for a delay of three years, and in
this time she summons ten fellow virgins and each of these eleven
have a retinue of thousand virgins. They set off in a ship and are
borne by the winds to Cologne, and from there they undergo circuitous
route which takes them via Basel and Rome back to Cologne again where
they are martyred by the Huns. This story is probably derived from an
old legend, a version of which is also found in Geoffrey of
Monmouth's History
of the British Kings,
where we find Ursula, eleven thousand noble virgins, and their
retinue of sixty thousand young women.

By
the thirteenth century, in the time when Jacobus was compiling the
Legenda Aurea,
the legend had become very elaborate. In the version recorded by
Jacobus, Ursula demands that her bethroted is baptized, and she wants
to bring the non-Christian virgins of her retinue to baptism as well,
thus giving Ursula a more active and apostolic role. As in the
above-mentioned legend, Ursula demands ten virgins to follow her, and
a retinue of thousand virgins for each of the eleven. The virgins are
then brought in from all over the world, and a special mention is
made of Gerasina of Sicily who joins Ursula - though not herself a
virgin - and brings her five children with her. This is a crucial
point in the story, that in addition to the eleven thousand virgins
there is a multitude of followers of both sexes who, as it is said,
joins this new knighthood of Ursula, all bent on martyrdom.

The
virgins and their followers then set out on the route described above
and when they arrive in Rome they are greeted by Pope Cyriacus who is
British and also fictional. Cyriacus joins up with the virgins and
they all leave for Cologne, together with a number of other bishops
who had held offices in cities as diverse as Ravenna, Lucca and
Antioch. In addition, we learn that Ursula's husband-to-be, Ethereus,
is also compelled by an angelic message to leave Britain where he has
been residing and go to Cologne to meet his martyrdom.

At
this stage in the story we are introduced to the first antagonists of
the story, two scheming pagan commanders of the Roman army called
Maximus and Africanus. They are concerned that this massive array of
Christians "would make the Christian religion flourish
overmuch", and so they plot to bring about the death of Ursula
and her companions. They therefore communicate with their kinsman
Julius, who despite his name and familial relations is the chief of
the Huns, and he agrees to march on Cologne and slaughter the
Christians. When all the groups of people finally converge on
Cologne, it is Justus who plays the role as the traditional tempter
as we find it in the classical accounts of virgin martyrs. For as the
Huns are slaughtering the Christians, Justus becomes so dazzled by
Ursula's beauty that he asks her to marry him. She refuses, and
Justus shoots and arrow through her.

The last section of the
legend as recounted by Jacobus tells of one virgin, Cordula, who had
hidden in the ships during the massacre, but gave up herself and was
martyred on the next day, leaving her outside the celebration of the
martyrs.

The
account in Legenda
Aurea
reads more like a chivalric romance rather than a saint's life, and
this has been the case since the earliest prose narratives about the
virgins of Cologne. The level of elaboration, however, the numerous
characters, the profusion of sub-plots and the gathering of people
from a wide-ranging geographical spectre, all these are typical of
the chivalric romance as this genre came about in the twelfth
century, the century which also saw a new surge in the cult of the
eleven thousand virgins.

It is interesting to note the
strategies employed to make the narrative more accessible to the
reader or the listener. The various sub-plots of Gerasina of Sicily,
Pope Cyriacus, the Bishop of Greece and his widowed sister, and
others, all contribute to make the narrative more episodic. This in
turns creates a different curve of suspense than what we find in most
other narratives of Legenda
Aurea,
where the trajectory is more straightforward, more formulaic. Ursula
and her companions, however, do not follow the typical trajectory,
but rather a trajectory which might be said to bear greater
resemblance to that of errant knights in the romances - except that
the journey of the virgins are guided by divine power and angelic
messages.

Another aspect which emphasises the similarity
between chivalric romance and the Ursula story is the wide geographic
scope. Ursula's followers come from all over Christendom, from
locations which are both exotic and more familiar, at least to the
continental audience. Ravenna, Lucca, Sicily, Antioch, Britain,
Greece, all these are place-names thrown in seemingly to provide that
blend of familiar and exotic which is so typical of the chivalric
romance. For example, in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival,
written in the early 13th century, we find figures like Morholt of
Ireland, Lot the king of Norway, Count Lanzidant of Greenland,
Kingrisin king of Ascalon and Ipomidon of Babylon, to mention only a
few of the most exotic members of the cast. This wide-reaching
geographic blend is a staple of the chivalric romance, and in the
abovementioned History
of the Kings of Britain
by Geoffrey of Monmouth, we read how King Arthur subdued a wide range
of kingdoms, as illustrated in the chronicle of Peter Langtoft, seen
below.

Arthur standing on the crowns he has conqueredMS Royal 20 A II, f.4, English miscellany, c.1307-c.1327Courtesy of British Library

It
is of course natural that a narrative containing such a multitude of
characters is in dire need of figureheads and focal points. This
explains for instance the various sub-plots of the story, which I
suspect should be seen as a sign of inspiration taken from the
numerous chivalric romances written in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries. Through these sub-plots, Ursula maintains her role as the
architecture of the grand scheme, but it also allows for some pauses
from the main action and the introduction to new characters which
adds faces and thus personality to a massive blob of around seventy
thousand persons marching on Cologne. However, it is worth noting
that Ursula is the only protagonist character who is featured
throughout the story. Eutherius, her husband, appears twice but is
largely inactive, while Gerasina, Cyriacus and the unfortunate
Cordula are given their time in the limelight and then never
mentioned again - with the possible exception of Cyriacus who is
mentioned leaving Rome, but as he has also been featured in the
preceding paragraph it might still be said to be a continuous
sub-plot. In this way, we are given a long list of names which allow
us to create some mental images of the characters involved, but they
are treated very briefly. However, since Ursula is the only properly
recurring character, she is the one most easily imprinted on the mind
of the audience. In a way, it seems like the secondary character are
there to lift up Ursula as the main protagonist, like a choir is
meant to bring out the soloist more strongly in a musical
performance. In this way, the multitude is given several heads but
only one figurehead.

Another explanation for the various
characters might be to add some verisimilitude to the story by
mentioned geographical localities which exist in the real world and
which therefore act as guarantors of the account's veracity. To such
a strategy it is of no significance that in the temporal setting of
this narrative - which Jacobus argues must be set in the mid-fifth
century, there was no queen of Sicily, and there was no pope called
Cyriacus.

Regardless the explanation for the multitude of
secondary characters, the need for a primary protagonist is evident.
We can ask ourselves why Ursula ended up as this figurehead rather
than Pinnosa mentioned in Sermo
in natali sanctarum Coloniensum virginum,
but ultimately it is only to be expected that an unwieldy mass of
virgins needed at least one named figurehead so that the faithful can
direct their prayers more easily, or so that the story is lifted out
of mere myth, which is what happens easily when no names are attached
to such a massive body of saints.

Ursula and the virginsMS Royal 13 A IX, f.4, Francesco Roseti of Verona, before 1547Courtesy of British Library

Concluding thoughts

In
the medieval calendars and collections of saints' lives we find
several feasts which commemorate groups of saints, men and women
grouped together because they had shared eminence in their holy
works. In the Legenda
Aurea
alone we find for instance chapters titled "The Seven Brothers",
"The Seven Sleepers", "Saint Adrian and His
Companions", "Saint Cyriacus and His Companions" (not
to be confused with the character in the Ursula legend", "Saint
Hippolytus and His Companions", "The Four Crowned Martyrs",
and a few more. In most of these stories there are some saints who
are more prominent than the others, and the often low number of
companions makes it easier to accept these groups, yet even they have
their figureheads.

The need for such figureheads can be
exemplified not only by the fact that Ursula has become the leader of
the group even though hers is not the oldest name featured in the
legend. Another instance can be found in a Norwegian legend most
likely based on the story of Ursula. This legend is that of Sanctorum
in Selio,
the holy of Selje. This legend tells of an Irish princess who escaped
marriage to a pagan prince by fleeing to Norway. They were brought to
the coast of Selje, which is a small portion of the the Western
Norwegian coast. When the pagans came after them, Sunniva prayed for
deliverance and the holy were buried in an avalanche of rocks. We
don't know exactly how old this story is, but we know that the story
was known in the mid-eleventh century from references in Adam of
Bremen's History
of the Diocese of Hamburg.
The name of this princess, however, was not given until the twelfth
century, when the relics of these men and women were translated to
Bergen. She was then called Sunniva, and she is now one of Norway's
four saints. That Sunniva emerges as the leader for the group as a
late development in the legend is similar to what we see in Ursula,
and points to the need for a figurehead in a group of saints as a
phenomenon not limited to the legend of the virgins of Cologne.

This need for figureheads is probably not limited only to the
medieval cult of saints, especially since there are plenty of
postmedieval collectives of saints that are officially recognized. We
have for instance the forty martyrs of England and Wales, or the
martyrs of Nagasaki in 1622, but I'm not sufficiently familiar with
these cases to know whether any figureheads emerged. It will,
however, be interesting to see the development of the collective of
saints canonized by the Armenian church earlier this year. In
commemoration of the genocide of the Armenians in 1915, the Armenian
church canonized all 1.5 million victims of the persecution, and the
question is whether anyone, and if so who, will emerge as leaders and
figureheads of the possibly biggest saint-collective in Christian
history.

Ursula and the virgins in the most traditional depictionMâcon - BM - ms. 0003, f.003, Jacobus de Voragine, Légende dorée, c.1470Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

fredag 25. desember 2015

As a historian by education I have spent most of my adult life in academia. This means that I have become exposed to the prejudices that come from both sides, both from academics who think that people outside academia are hopelessly ignorant, and from non-academics who think academics to be out of touch with the real world. I'm quite sure most of my fellow scholars have been in touch with these ideas one way or the other. Personally I consider both these sides to be indulging in caricatures and I have little patience for either, but naturally there are some people from both within and without academia who come dangerously close to their respective caricatures.

In my current job as a PhD candidate at the Centre for Medieval Literature in Odense, Denmark, part of the many aspects of my work deals with impact and outreach, i.e. how to ensure how my research can be made available and accessible beyond the Centre itself. This has been a long-standing preoccupation for me as well, and this is part of why this blog has developed from its original travelogue form towards its current form as a channel for disseminating information about my research and reading. To my mind, academic research must have as one of its purposes to be made accessible to non-specialists so that the research can actually be of use to the public discourse. This is perhaps particularly pertinent to medievalists whose subject matter is perennially a topic in non-specialist discourse, yet often without regard for the latest research on the matter itself - which is why so many myths about the Middle Ages persist so very strongly even in our time.

I was reminded of all this today when I was having a chat with my mother, and she wanted me to tell about what I had been up to lately at work. Not knowing where to start, I began talking about some of things that had taken most of my time in the week before leaving for home. This spiralled into a sprawling and eclectic conversation jumping from one topic to the next, only briefly touching directly on my own research. We were joined later by my father as I was explaining the origins of the cult of saints, and the conversation kept going on to medieval manuscripts, Reformation history and church history.

This latter topic is of some particular interest to my family since we live just a few hundred meters from where the medieval church of our village, Hyen, once stood. This is a church we know very little about, and I have only seen it mentioned twice in the ecclesiastical diplomas from the fourteenth century. Nothing remains from the structure itself, and it is likely that it was a wooden church, or that perhaps its stonework became embedded in the cellar walls of the nearby farms. No excavation has been undertaken, and today it is only marked by a menhir which was raised in its commemoration in the 1950s.

This church is the only proper connection my home village has to the Middle Ages, and it is apt to provoke some speculation. My father became triggered by our talk of manuscripts and started thinking of the sources that he thought must once have been there, such as books containing details about baptisms and weddings, arguing that these details must have been kept to provide data for the tax collectors and eventual disputes. It struck me how natural such expectations are to a modern mind, accustomed as we are to a wealth of paper and information. For my father, these convictions were perhaps all the more easily entertained because he is a sexton at the modern village church and a part of his job is to write down these details in the registers. I then took the opportunity to explain just how precious vellum was, and that our church was likely to have been a somewhat poor church, and that it might not even have had an entire bible among its possessions.

My father's expectations and his modern vantage point opened up for me a series of speculations about what our local priests might have had in terms of books, and that forced me to put together facts with conjecture, mingling what I knew from my academic work and what little information we have available about the church which once stood near our farm.

Later that evening I went with my father to help him with a few things in church, and as we were finishing he showed me the church registers which are kept there, looking up the details for the day of my baptism back in 1987 and the day of my confirmation in 2002. It was quite amazing to see these documents both from a personal and from a historian's point of view, and it became all the more clear to me what expectations a modern mind might have regarding medieval source materials.

All in all, my talk with my parents reminded me once again why it is so crucial that academics not only stick to their own when discussing and disseminating their work. When I'm talking with my colleagues at lunch, for instance, or at a conference, we have a common frame of reference which is radically different from the frames of reference that non-specialists can be expected to have. This is why it is sometimes quite easy to talk about work to fellow medievalists, even though we have our own specializations to bridge. But precisely because my parents are not schooled in medieval history, I need to engage more with basic matters, matters which I most often take for granted and therefore might not problematize sufficiently well. Furthermore, when I have to explain what I otherwise would find superfluous to explain, I am taken down those routes which might lead me to apply knowledge more conjecturally than is the norm in academic work. I'm therefore quite happy that my parents open up these paths to me in this way.

fredag 18. desember 2015

A few days ago, November 30, academic
and blogger Erin Wunker launched an appeal to fellow
academics for crafting syllabi that emphasised inclusiveness and
diversity. The appeal was disseminated on Twitter via the hashtag
inclusivesyllabus, devised by Wunker's co-blogger Aimée Morrison
(Associate Professor at University of Waterloo). I myself became
aware of this appeal thanks to medievalist Dorothy Kim who picked itand redirected it more specifically to teachers of the pre-1500 eras. What
followed was an engaging discussion about various ways in which to
make syllabi more inclusive. Some of the suggestions that arose were
collected in storify by Jonathan Hsy, and it
became evident that there were many ways to go about making a
syllabus more inclusive.

Personally, as a historian of
medieval texts, I embrace the idea of an inclusive syllabus because a
history syllabus should reflect historical reality, and the reality
is that the medieval world was both diverse and complex (though often
not inclusive in the modern sense). In this blogpost I wish to present some of my ideas
for an inclusive syllabus, ideas which emerged in the course of the
Twitter discussion, and which I think are more easily fleshed out
here. In the following I will only address one topic, and hopefully I
will return to other topics in later blogposts. Since this post is
the result of a collaborative discussion my ideas were inspired by
the suggestions of several people, sometimes in agreement, sometimes
in opposition. I will try my best to provide due acknowledgement for
these ideas, and if some readers who participated in this discussion
feel they have been forgotten, please let me know.

The
following is a set of works, themes and strategies by which I believe
a syllabus of a course in medieval studies can become more inclusive.
It is worth noting that this is not an exhaustive list by any means.
It is also worth noting that the following does not comprise a
syllabus of its own, but that it is intended to provide ideas for
those who are designing their own syllabi. Moreover, I want to
emphasise that a great number of participants in this dicussion come
from literary studies, while I myself have a background predominantly
from history. This means that my perspective will be somewhat
different, and it also means that many suggestions might be more
suitable for history rather than, say, English courses. However, I'm
of the opinion that to teach medieval literature without also
bringing in medieval history to provide a context for this literature
is shoddy and wrong.

A final remark worth making is that the
degree and level of diversity and inclusiveness in a medieval studies
syllabus depends very much on the course itself. I for my part would
love to design a course which was centred on precisely the diversity
of medieval history. However, even though syllabi can often emphasise
diversity only up to a point, the important thing is to be aware that
measures can be taken to ensure an increased attention to diversity,
both in introductory courses and more specialised courses.

There
are many ways in which a syllabus can be made more inclusive, and a
good place to start is to make sure that the reading list includes
scholarship done by both men and women. In medieval studies, this is
not difficult at all: Many brilliant scholars, both male and female,
have contributed to the field of medieval studies for decades, and to
have both men and women is important not only because it is more
inclusive but also because that often is the only way to accurately
represent the contributions done in a field of medieval scholarship.
Once when I was a teaching assistant at the Norwegian University of
Science and Technology, after having finished my MA thesis, I was
approached by one of the female history students who asked if I could
give her some names of female academics. She made it quite clear that
she wanted someone of her own gender to look up to, and in a field
like history I can understand that very well as it often comes across
- at least to first-year students - that history is largely written,
and enacted, by men. Having done my MA thesis on the cult of Saint
Edward the Confessor in the High Middle Ages, I was not short on
suggestions and ended up compiling a long list of female academics
whom I had myself relied on for my dissertation. To provide students
with the sensation that they have someone from their own gender to
look up to, and via those role models to be reassured that their
gender does not prohibit a career in a field of medieval studies, is
one of the cornerstones of an inclusive syllabus.

The same
point, that students need to feel represented, should also be made
when it comes to ethnicity. However, in medieval studies - especially
history - that is less easily done simply because a vast majority of
medieval scholarship is conducted by Caucasian men and women in
Europe and in North America. When possible, inclusion of relevant
scholarship by non-Caucasian academics is a positive thing and is to
be encouraged.

Catherine of SienaAutun - BM - ms. 0269, f.170v, Book of Hours, Use of Autun, c.1480-1490 Courtesy of enluminures.culture.fr

Female
medieval authors

The
majority of recorded medieval history is dominated by men. The
majority of known individuals from the Middle Ages, both in the
political sphere, the religious sphere, the cultural sphere, the
mercantile sphere and so on, are men. Most of the texts written in
the Middle Ages were written by men and largely for men. This is how
the situation is, and the majority of primary sources for a syllabus
in medieval studies is most likely to be comprised of male writers or
male authors (not always the same thing in the Middle Ages), unless
the course was designed specifically to teach female writers, which
would be an interesting challenge. The problem, however, is not that
most medieval sources were written by men, this is to be expected.
The problem arises when the many female influences on medieval texts
are ignored, and it is here an inclusive syllabus can make an
important difference.

Although most medieval authors were men,
we have quite a list of female authors as well and these can be
employed in a wide range of syllabi, covering several angles and
subjects. Since women in the Middle Ages had several restrictions for
how they could participate in society. However, many women did become
notable authors, for instance due to their education as nuns.
Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that many authors did not
themselves write the works they authored, but dictated them to a
scribe. This also meant that the literacy was not necessarily the
obstacle we might think it is. I also want to point to Hildegard of
Bingen for a case where lack of education was seen as a strong point.
In her collection of celestial visions Scivias,
Hildegard emphasises her insufficient education and lifts it up as a
mark of the authenticity of her vision. Because she is lacking
rhetorical prowess and can only describe her visions in simple words,
her prose is also - she argues - more true, more accessible, more
accurate. This claim of superiority in content through inferiority in
style is a timeworn topos of much medieval writing and originated in
part in opposition to the rhetoric of pagan writers of the early
Christian period. Hildegard is here following an old tradition, but
she employs the motif as a woman: Since she, as a woman, is less
educated than high-ranking churchmen, her prose is untouched - thus
not falsified - by rhetorical ornament.

It is also important
to note that although there were many medieval femal writers and
authors, several female voices gained dissemination through the
translation of their words into Latin. This was the case with Saint
Birgitta of Sweden whose revelations were translated by her
confessor. In the case of some Italian female recluses who became
venerated as saints, their stories were also written down into Latin
by their male, mendicant confessors. The stories and the content of
the works came from women, but word and content was shaped by men
educated in the hagiographic genre.

Despite social
restrictions, women could become powerful voices in their age, and
could be ardent critics of men of powers, be they kings or popes,
such as Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena respectively. Most
of the primary sources from the Middle Ages which have a female
authorship are religious works since it was in the religious sphere
could be most active and could most easily express themselves in
literature. These works, however, are applicable not only to
religious matters but can be used to explore several aspects of
medieval culture.

Christine de Pizan BL MS Harley 4431, various works by Christine de Pizan, France, c.1410-c.1414Courtesy of British Library

Below
is an incomplete list of female late-antique and medieval authors
which provides important suggestions to elements of an inclusive
syllabus:

Anna Komnene, The
Alexiad

Anonymous
nun of Barking Abbey, Life of Edward the
Confessor
(in Anglo-Norman verse)

Birgitta of Sweden,
Revelations

Christine
de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies;
The Treasure of the City of Ladies

Clemence
of Barking, Life of Saint Catherine (in
Anglo-Norman verse)

Egeria, The
Pilgrimage

Elisabeth
von Schönau, various works

Hadewijch of Brabant, various
works

Heloise, Letters

Hildegard
von Bingen, Scivias

Hrothsvita
of Gandersheim, various works

Jorunn
Skáldmær, skaldic extracts preserved in The
Prose Edda

Margery
Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe

Marie
de France, Lais

Medieval
women as patrons

As
was pointed out by Erica Weaver,
medieval women of power - either as queens or abbesses - were
important patrons of arts and were the dedicatees of many important
works of medieval literature. Chrétien de Troyes, for instance had
Marie duchess of Champagne as his patron, and Marie's mother Eleanor
of Aquitaine was the patron of writers such as Wace and Benoit de
Sainte-Maure. One of the perhaps most interesting cases of female
medieval patronage is Queen Emma of England who commissioned the
historiographical work now known as Encomium Emmae Reginae(alternately
Gesta Cnutonis). This latter work is available in translation and has been the subject of much excellent scholarship.

It
is here important to note that although female literacy was generally
lower than the literacy of men, literacy in the Middle Ages is not
the same as being familiar with literature. In the Middle Ages,
reading was a communal activity and one person would often read aloud
to others, either during mealtimes in the monastery, in the royal
court, or in the families of nobles and the merchants. Precisely
since the ability to read was so limited, those who could read were
often given the task of reading to others, and sometimes work could
be recited from memory - which was made easier by writing in verse,
and which is why prose texts could sometimes be rendered into verse
as a mnemonic tool. Medieval literature had a strong oral element we
sometimes tend to overlook.

Medieval
female saints

In
addition to teaching works authored by women, an inclusive syllabus
also needs to contain works written about women, even though these
works were authored by men. One helpful perspective here is history,
where legal documents of various kinds provide examples of the the
roles, the constrictions, but also the possibilities of women in the
Middle Ages. Even in a literature course, it would be a great
addition to provide some historical context for the lives of medieval
women, for women in the Middle Ages were not secondary characters to
historical events although they have been made to be so by
traditional historiographical works.

Four female saints (the Magdalene, Mary of Egypt, Margaret and one more)BL MS Royal 2 B VII, f.308, psalter, England, between 1310 and 1320Courtesy of British Library

One
field in which the role of women, the perception of women and the
importance of women in the Middle Ages can be seen is in the cult of
saints. I emphasise this field because the cult of saints is my own
particular field, so I am more than a little biased. Nonetheless, I
maintain that in the cult of saints we see the convergence of many
subjects and many perspectives which are useful to the topic at hand.
For instance, when reading texts pertaining to medieval female
saints, we can in some cases grasp the outlines of the historicity of
the lives of these women (though that historicity has been obscured
by the pre-requisites of hagiography). We can also be able to detect
how male medieval writers viewed women. A great number of such
writers held a view of women which was tinged with various degrees of
misogyny inherited largely from patristic writers and parts of the
Biblical narrative, and which was cultivated by a monastic
environment in which celibacy and separation of the sexes were seen
as crucial steps towards spiritual perfection. Also secular writers,
like Giovanni Boccaccio, were likely to hold such views of the
feminine. However, men who wrote down hagiographies for women were
faced with a subject which had attained holiness and yet belonged to
what was considered the weaker sex. In these hagiogaphies, therefore,
male writers were compelled to provide a more nuanced depiction of
women, and even though they might exude a more negative attitude to
women in general they at least had to acknowledge that their
protagonists were holy persons.

The cult of saints is an
important source for an inclusive syllabus, not only because it is a
repository for mixed attitudes towards women, but also because women
themselves could write hagiographies. I've mentioned above the Life
of Saint Catherine written
by Clemence of Barking, for instance. Clemence's Life
was,
however, an adaptation, a vernacular version of an existing
legend.The norm was that men were the ones writing the Latin, seminal
lives, such as when Goscelin of Saint-Bertin and Osbert of Clare were
commissioned to write the vitae
of English female monastics who were believed to be saints. In the
genre of hagiography, however, we see an interesting intersection of
men and women in the cases where the lives of the women were dictated
by the women themselves in the vernacular and then translated into
Latin as the vita
of that woman by a male figure, often her confessor. This is believed
to be the case with Christina Markyate in the twelfth century, and
became a widespread trend in the emergence of cults of female
recluses in Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth century. In the
case of the Italian ascetic women, their confessors and/or
hagiographers were often monks of the Dominican and Franciscan orders
who sought to make of these women examples for others to follow, and
who also were likely to give these vita
a certain mendicant spin. This relationship between a female author
and a male writer, translator and editor is an interesting area of
study, and there are numerous examples of this relationship. As
mentioned above, the same relationship goes for male scribes who
latinized the visions and polemics of women religious who later
became saints, such as Birgitta of Sweden, but in those cases we can
at least expect that the author has been active in the editing
process, whereas in the case of hagiographies the author and
protagonist has been dead for some time by the time the hagiography
is published.

During
the Middle Ages, there were many female saints which were venerated
throughout Christendom. Some of these women were mythical and
belonged to such a distant past that their mere historicity is
dubious, namely SS Margaret, Lucy, Agnes, Agatha, Catherine of
Alexandria, Barbara and others. Some were results of more slowly
coalescing legends, as in the cases of SS Ursula, and Sunniva of
Norway. Other women were historical, although veneration and
hagiography naturally added some sediments of myth to their stories,
such as Eadburga of Winchester, Elizabeth of Hungary, or Margaret of
Scotland. This rich repository of medieval stories about women is a
great and needful addition to an inclusive medievalist syllabus.

Below is a list of some lives of female saints available in
English translation:

Anonymous, The Life
of Christina Markyate
(Oxford World Classics)

Clemence of Barking, Life
of Saint Catherine
(Everyman)

Geoffrey of Burton, Life and
Miracles of St Modwenna
(Oxford Medieval Texts)

Goscelin of Saint-Bertin, texts on the
female saints of Ely (Oxford Medieval Texts)

Niketas
Magistros, Life of Theoktistes of Lesbos
(Dumbarton Oaks)

Raymond of Capua, The
Life of Agnes of Montepulciano(Dominican
nuns of summit)

Shorter versions of legends and lives can
be found in Jacobus de Voragine's The
Golden Legend
(Princeton University Press). For a more detailed studies of these
women, it is also necessary to work with their liturgical
offices.

In addition to these female saints, it is of course
important to remember the omnipresent cult of the Virgin Mary, which
resulted in an expansive body of literature, both in Latin and in the
vernacular. This subject is too big for this present blogpost, but
should not be overlooked as it covers both religious and secular
literature, hymns, liturgical offices, miracle collections and prose
narratives.

Mary of EgyptBL MS Royal 20 D VI, Lives of the saints, Wauchier de Denain, France, 13th centuryCourtesy of British Library

Women
also appear in medieval texts as representatives of otherness, but
this is a subject I hope to cover in a later blogpost.

mandag 14. desember 2015

Advent is well under way and this has been a particularly busy month for me with several projects that have needed my attention. Now things are finally starting to calm down, and as I prepare to finish my last days in Denmark before Christmas, I want to share with you two of my all-time favourite Advent hymns, which have been a part of my Christmas experience ever since I was a child, and which still bring me very fond memories of Christmas in Western Norway.

The first one is a Norwegian version of a hymn traditionally attributed to Ambrose of Milan, namely Veni Redemptor Gentium, "come redeemer of the peoples". Whether this attribution to Ambrose is correct is beyond my knowledge. However, there is reason to be suspicious of such claims, as many hymns written in the style instigated by Ambrose at Milan have been wrongly attributed to him. It has therefore proved difficult to distinguish between hymns by Ambrose and Ambrosian hymns, the latter being hymns composed in the Milanese style inspired by the sainted bishop. Back home, this hymn is traditionally sung by the congregation in one of the first Advent services, and since this is often before I have returned home it has been a while since I heard it.

The second hymn is much younger than Veni redemptor. It has traditionally been dated to the twelfth century, but its oldest appearance dates to the eighteenth century.

Om meg

Norwegian medievalist, bibliophile, lover of art, music and food. This blog is a mixture of things personal and scholarly and it serves as a venue for me to share things I find interesting with likeminded people.